The most expensive baseball player of all time, Shohei Ohtani (29-LA Dodgers), will be seen in South Korea next March. That’s because his first official game will be in South Korea.

Since Ohtani signed a 10-year, $700 million (about 92.4 billion won) contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers on Tuesday, Seoul, which will host the official opening game of the 2024 Major League Baseball (MLB) season, has become the center of attention for baseball fans around the world. Korean baseball fans are already excited, saying, “Ohtani will make his Dodgers debut in Korea” and “I want to see more of Ohtani”.

In July, the MLB office officially announced that the 2024 regular season opener will be held in Seoul on March 20-21, 2024. The teams will be the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres. The game will be played at Seoul’s Gocheok Sky Dome, the country’s only dome stadium, depending on the cold weather.

This makes South Korea the fourth non-U.S. country to host an MLB Opening Day game.

MLB has previously hosted regular season openers in Mexico, Japan, and Australia. 안전놀이터 MLB has been hosting Opening Day games around the world as part of its strategy to spread baseball excitement around the globe.

The Los Angeles Dodgers and Padres are familiar franchises to Korean baseball fans. The Los Angeles Dodgers are particularly popular in Korea because they are home to several Korean major leaguers, including Park Chan-ho (50), Choi Hee-seop (44), and Ryu Hyun-jin (36-Toronto Blue Jays). For the Padres, Kim Ha-seong (28) is the starting center fielder. This year, Kim became the first Korean major leaguer to win a Major League Baseball Gold Glove. The Gold Glove is voted on by the managers and coaches of each team to recognize the player with the most outstanding defensive performance during the year.

In addition, the “baseball genius” moved to the Los Angeles Dodgers, giving fans in Korea a chance to see him up close. He is expected to play his first official game with the Dodgers in Korea this year. However, due to an elbow injury and surgery at the end of the 2023 season, Ohtani will only play as a designated hitter next season. He is not expected to take the mound, only bat.